Abstract
Humans are participating in the sixth mass extinction, and for the first time in 200,000 years, our species may be on the brink of extinction. We are facing the greatest challenges we have ever encountered, namely how to nourish eight billion people in the face of changing climates ecologically, diminish disparity between the haves and the have-nots economically, and ease xenophobia, fear, and hatred socially? Historically, our tribal nature served us well, but the costs of tribalism are now far too great for one people inhabiting one tiny orb. If we hope to survive, we must mend the divides that isolate us from one another and the communities we inhabit. While not doing so could be our undoing, doing so could transform our collective consciousness into one that respects, nourishes, and embraces our interdependence with life on Earth. At a basic level, we can cultivate life by using nature as a model for how to produce and consume food; by decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels for energy to grow, process, and transport food; and by transcending persistent battles over one-size-fits-all plant- or animal-based diets. If we learn to do so in ways that nourish life, we may awaken individually and collectively to the wisdom of the Maori proverb Ko au te whenua. Ko te whenua Ko au: I am the land. The land is me. In this paper, we use “scapes” —foodscapes, landscapes, heartscapes, and thoughtscapes—as unifying themes to discuss our linkages with communities. We begin by considering how palates link animals with foodscapes. Next, we address how palates link foodscapes with landscapes. We then consider how, through our reverence for life, heartscapes link palates with foodscapes and landscapes. We conclude with transformations of thoughtscapes needed to appreciate life on Earth as a community to which we belong, rather than as a commodity that belongs to us.
Highlights
For nearly 200,000 years, Homo sapiens gathered plants and hunted animals for nourishment
When the projected population increase to 10 billion people is combined with an increase of 32% in per person emissions from global shifts to ultra-processed diets high in refined carbohydrates, the net effect is an 80% increase by 2050 in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) from food production and consumption (Tilman and Clark, 2014)
We reduce our need for water, the lifeblood of this planet, and fossil fuels to grow, fertilize, weed, and mow lawns
Summary
For nearly 200,000 years, Homo sapiens gathered plants and hunted animals for nourishment. His book was a heart-felt account of how our growing detachment from nature was wreaking havoc on nature’s communities Despite his eloquent pleas, the changes that fossil-fuel based human societies have fashioned since his death, nearly 75 years ago, are breathtaking. We begin by considering how palates link animals with foodscape; we address the links between foodscapes and landscapes; we consider how, through a reverence for life, heartscapes link palates with foodscapes and landscapes; we conclude with the transformations of thoughtscapes required to appreciate land as a community to which we belong, rather than as a commodity belonging to us. Our creative capacity to nurture plants, animals, and people depends on our ability to give and receive love (the heart chakra, which is the conduit from the root, sacral, and solar plexus to the throat, third eye, and crown chakras). Awareness that “I am” is naught, that all knowledge and being—including what I call “my” self—is illusory occurs when consciousness is liberated to its true state (crown chakra) prior to the time (our birth) when we each begin to identify with “my” self
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